The captive bird—a prey in its scaly flesh to the old aspirations of its race, and weary of its watery home—was leaping towards an impossible heaven.
Finally, with a more despairing effort, the creature fell on the shore, with its gills quivering.
Then Wilhelm seized it, and the assistants departed with their booty. They apostrophized it, and amused themselves with it like old ill-conditioned guttersnipes. They were whistling, and imitating the blackbird’s song in mockery, and then, by way of a laugh, a great neighing came from their chests, and without knowing it, they reproduced the sound of a horse’s trumpet much better than they had that of the winged flute.
I remained dreamily contemplating the pond, that liquid cage in which the enchanted carp had suffered the haunting desire to fly, and the regret for a nest. The liquid mirror, a moment disturbed by the fury of the fish’s leaps, would not have reassumed its leaden calm before the creature was dead.
Its martyrdom was going to end in the stewpan. How would that of the other victims finish, the escaped beasts, and Macbeth?
Oh, Macbeth! how to deliver him!
On the water, now becalmed in deep repose, a last ripple was spreading its circles, and the depths of the firmament were reflected in its mirror again. The evening star was shining in the depths of the lake millions of leagues away, but at will, it was possible, on the contrary, to imagine it floating on the surface, and the leaves of the water-lilies, crescents and half-circles, seemed like reflections of the moon at its successive ages, which had remained there, slumbering in that chill water.
Macbeth! I thought once more. Macbeth! What about him?
At this moment there was the sound of a distant bell at the main door. Somebody at this hour of the day! Nobody ever came!...
I retraced my steps to the château at a rapid pace, asking myself for the first time what would happen to Nicolas if the Law descended on Fonval.